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Hi all
It is totally embarrassing, but I could not find a function how to reset crop to original image size. Appreciate any help. Please let me demonstrate:
Affinity Photo - How to reset crop (question).mov
Btw: it is super illogical in Photoshop also, there you must click "Image/Reveal All" - what also can mean "reset all edits I have done so far".
Dear UI designers: please think of the users not being part of the development process and for that knowing nothing. Just consider this: even if I use AP since years, I have of course zero knowledge of it in comparison to any person being part of development process.
I could e.g. also not find a keyboard shortcut for rotating the clone stamp tool brush, typing clone in the Preferences does not find any entries in Tools nor Keyboard Shortcuts ("stamp" does also show no results)
Appreciate any help
Have a nice weekend,
Roland

I am posting this feedback in this section of the forum, I hope this help to improve the software
Not going to talk about the bugs, I hope all of them get fixed
I am going to compare my experience with other softares, such as Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape (the ones I use the most)
For the few time I have used the software I can tell is very minimalistic, (I really hope this is not because the Ipad version limitations, as PC can do much more than a Ipad, so I hope PC version is not being limited to keep in the same quality of the Ipad version)
Or maybe is the way the software is going to be, as it could be a minimalistic software not planned to have advanced features, I would like to know which kind of software Affinity Designer aim to be, minimalistic or advanced?
Developer team care for both personas this mean less time to focus to improve designer persona and possibly priorize pixel persona over vector persona (The software is meant to be a vector graphic software, rather than a raster graphic software)
The exporting persona is not intuitive and does not have much more to offer than the traditional exporting in the user menu
The software have very few settings and some of them are not compatible with SVG format (The standard file format for vector graphics)
The software have very few tools and some of them are not compatible with SVG format (The standard file format for vector graphics)
There are very few tools for vector graphics, and the customization for them are very tricky and not intuitive & limited
_
What I suggest is to focus on introducing new tools&features&settings to work with vector graphics and improve the ones that the software already have
Currently I don`t use this software because of the limitations exposed, as other vector graphic software have to offer much more optimized tools&features for vector format (SVG), I really hope it get more complexity eventually as for now it is not a stand alone software for its limitations & few features for vector graphics.

(This appears to be the feature-requests forum, but I've been wrong before. If I picked the wrong location please advise.)
I would surely appreciate improvements to the Edit Text Style dialog, which could be made easier on the end-user.
Dropdown menu for selecting styles
Please consider adding a drop-down menu to this dialog's first panel (the one named, simply, "Style"). Purpose: select some other style for editing. It would be useful having the option to filter the display: all styles, versus paragraph styles only, versus character styles only, versus only styles presently used in the document.
UI Font size : -)
Text throughout Affinity Publisher's UI is small enough to make things, well, a bit hard on some of us. I'm glad I don't use a 4K monitor — if I did the UI would be so hard to read that I would probably not have purchased the program after using the trial version. Even on this laptop with its relatively small monitor, there is plenty of "screen real estate" to expand a dialog like Edit Text Style if a larger UI font were used.
I've noticed that Publisher's Mac version has a way via Preferences to adjust the fonts in the UI. Not so the Windows version. So Windows version users are stuck with the small UI fonts, as-is. (I do already have fonts somewhat enlarged via Windows' own control panel. But enlarging them further using that control will not likely give good results.)
Display of specific style information
Describing all kinds of data—font, size, color (etc.)—simply as "No change" says nothing about the actual style data. This is unlike the style information displays in word processors or page composition programs I've used in the past. Even in the first ("Style") panel of the dialog, the summary information at the bottom of the dialog (in the "Style Settings" field) includes the actual typeface name only if you are editing "Base." In short: Understanding fully what's in a style has been made unnecessarily difficult. Please consider ways of improving this.
Copying style data to the clipboard
I'd hoped I could copy the information from the dialog's "Style Settings" field to the clipboard so that I could examine the style information using a more readable typeface, in a text editor or word processor. Each item in the field ends with a semicolon. So, I figured I could replace each semicolon with "newline"—voilà, more readable text.
But the information within this field cannot be selected or highlighted (let alone copied). Please either add a "Copy" [to clipboard] button for the field, or at least make the text in it selectable with the mouse (or all of it selected at once by clicking in the field and pressing Control+A) so that the user himself can copy it to the clipboard and paste it somewhere else.
Thanks.

Ok Serif / Affinity guys... This is driving me crazy!
Previously I have submitted this suggestion, though I don't believe I was heard.
IMO Affinity products desperately need the ability to auto-hide panels. See [https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31218-multi-uiux-suggestion-auto-hide-panels/]
I am using a very large notebook computer with a 17" screen. Large screen for a notebook, though smaller screen size for graphic design work. With this monitor using the panel controls in Affinity products is frustrating. There simply isn't enough room!
I group panels needing more vertical space (layers, effects, history, brushes, etc.) together. Panels needing less vertical space are also grouped. Regardless how it is organized I do not have enough vertical space to effectively use the panels. Some of the panels require large vertical space, some medium, some smaller. With 3 stacked sets of panels the larger panels are way too cramped. Even if I group the medium and smaller panels together (which puts way too many panels in the smaller panel group), there still isn't enough vertical space for the larger panels. With smaller monitors, having panels on both sides of the screen (without auto-hide) is obviously impractical. Working with cramped panels is extremely clumsy and frustrating.
Affinity UI panel design is not elegant for smaller monitors!!!
If I could auto-hide panels (as was implemented in Serif *Plus applications), I could put panels on both sides of my monitor and have all the panels I find useful easily accessible. Current implementation forces users with 'smaller' monitors to make significant concessions in their use of panels.
Regardless of screen size, the ability to auto-hide panel groups would be useful for all/most users, as this would allow users to better organize their application interface, and enable users to have more panels immediately accessible. This would make the use of panels in Affinity applications significantly more elegant.
PLEASE consider implementing an auto-hide feature in panel groups in Affinity applications.

I'm new to Affinity Designer, coming from Adobe Illustrator. Still a learning curve, but the transition has been pretty smooth so far, so that's awesome.
One thing that I'm missing however is the flexible tabs/windows, so the ability to drag the windows from the tabs.
So for example when I open 5 different vector files for, it creates 5 tabs. Each file sits in it's own tab. In Photoshop or Illustrator, I could just mouse click and drag each one these tabs out, so they create a free floating windows. I could then just drag the artwork elements from one window to another.
In Affinity, this doesn't seem possible. So the tabs stay tabs and the only way to place artwork from one tab to another is to copy and paste as I can't drag the artwork between the tabs.
Or is there a way to do this?
Also Adobe has a feature called 'Paste in place'. So when I copy an element from one artboard, I can paste it into the exact same spot of the other artboard (if the artboard is of same specs of course)
Is there anything like this in Affinity?
Thanks

Hello Affinity,
I was wondering if you guys are going to include a Prototyping Software for UX. I have purchased Affinity Designer and I loved it.
I just wanted to know whether you guys are planning to add Prototyping Persona or maybe lunching a Prototyping software for UX since the User Experience industry is booming. I have created this UI in Affinity Designer and I would want to add interactivity to it. Like add transition effects, design overlays, clickable buttons to go from one artwork to another and record the whole process and render it as a video for user testing. I have also did a mini project and attached it in this form so it could give you guys an idea.
Thank you

Usually when I make my UI, I get white shadows that I don't add when it's uploaded to the cloud and then when I see my uploaded UI image, I see it. How can I overcome this issue and remove it?
I know Adobe XD doesn't have this sort of issue when you export the UI design.

It may be because it is my first interaction with Affinity Designer but I think it is weird that I can set borders and background colours on my artboards and they are simply ignored, it just sits there and does nothing. It would really not only be nice to be able to see those borders but also set defaults for artboards on the document and decide whether they show on export or are only another visual aid. Another way around would be to remove the fill and brush from artboards and enable only a visually delimiting border around artboards, either by document or globally.

Hi guys,
Can anyone tell me how is the compatibility between Affinity Designer and Protopie?
I would like to use AD to design the user interface and be able to animate it in Protopie, is it possible?
Thank you,

Lots of people request to have quick action tools added to the standard interface.
Requests like this:
"The alignments tools are too deeply buried in the transform pallet"
"It takes too many taps to expand the stroke"
"I want undo/redo in a better place"
"It would be great to have a quick duplicate button so i don't have to go into a menu"
"Can we put Combine into the tool bar because i use it all the time"
"Nudge tools on-screen would be cool to have so i don't need a keyboard"
"Need a quicker way to re-order layers, maybe back forward buttons, K thanks!"
... the list goes on...
All of these requests could be fulfilled with a user editable tool bar in the empty space in the top bar (persona's could even be a pop out menu to save space).
The screenshot says it all. This would be the ultimate shortcut.

I use a two-monitor setup, and it would be essential for Publisher (and for the other Affinity products too) to have the ability to save my palette layout.
At the moment, after an update (or a crash), everything resets, and I have to painstakingly recreate my setup.

Is it possible to save a custimized setting of window/pane positions?
It appears to happen accasionally with 2 open documents that choosing "Window" > "Merge all Windows" results in a crash and closes the Application. After reopening the app all panes are spread somehow chaotic on my two monitors and neded to get reanged.
And: how can I go back to the deafult window/pane setting? Meanwhile the tool and document and the long pane with the persona icons aren't locked anymore to the main monitors edges and partially covering the document window.

A ctrl-click appears not to react mac-like & not as mentioned in the Affinity Publisher Beta Help: – For instance in the Swatches Pane:
A ctrl-click on a color swatch opens a pulldown color-pane (with noise slider instead the opacity slider in the 'original' color-pane). The same result occurs with an option-click and with a double-click (no key pressed).
Different to this behaviour the Help says:
"ctrl-click the swatch you want to remove and choose Delete Fill from the pop-up menu."
In MacOS usually a ctrl-click = a right-click. This appears not to work in Publisher, different to its Help-Info.

Please help!!
How can I see how big my images are without extra clicks?
Take a look at the following image:
For the life of me, I can't find anywhere that shows the image dimensions except for if I'm using the view tool or if I'm resizing the thing.
I mean, isn't that a thousand times more important than knowing how much the image is zoomed in?
Hopefully I'm just missing something blatantly obvious because its really late.
I put giant red arrows to point where I would like to see them, but then I guess I should be posting that in the suggestions bit.
P.S. Any help is super appreciated.

I've noticed that both in the video tutorials and in the Affinity Photo Workbook, that when a layer is selected in the layers panel, it is highlighted in blue. In my version of Affinity Photo (1.6.6), the selected layers are highlighted in a brownish/gold color. Is this highlight color something that can be changed? Should I be concerned or not worry about this difference. I'm still learning Affinity Photo.
Thanks!
Ed

Recently I have not been able to see the document that I am working on or any of the following at the same time:
* Toolbar
* Tools
* Context Toolbar
*Studio
I can tab to toggle the UI on and off. When UI is off and I can see the document if I use the View menu to see any of the above then the document disappears from view.
I have tried resetting all the default but this does not solve the problem.
I have the same problem with the beta version.
I am running Windows 10.and experienced other problems (with restarting) after Windows updates were installed on 12-13 September; the latest Windows update has fixed this.. This may be a coincidence but AP worked fine before (I am not sure of the exact date but certainly after 1 September). After the Windows updates I did not try AP until a couple of days ago.
Have I accidentally changed something?
Has anyone else ever had the same problem?
Update 30/09/2017
I have found the cause of the problem as the settings for AMD Radeon™ R5 Graphics card. The drivers for this card were updated with the Windows updates and the new driver appears to have either caused the problem or changed the settings. The setting for the Affinity Photo now default to "Unassigned". If I change these to "Power Saving" the problem disappears when I restart AP but reappear if I select any other setting.

For some reason, the AFD interface is scaling to beige where it should be scaling to white.
This doesn't affect any final renders, but while it substitutes white for beige in the interface, I can't make any accurate design judgements involving colour.
So this is happening on my new computer. I booted up my old computer with Designer and it doesn't have the same issue. Whites are white. I open up the same files on my new computer and whites are now beige (see attachment). Note in the toolbar where fill and stroke should be a red line in a white box, its a red line in a beige box.
I tried changing the renderer from my GPU (nvidia) to WARP but this has had no effect.
I am running Windows 7 on both computers and I have attached my Nvidia information file for more details.
I have not noticed this problem in any other applications running on my system. It is not a monitor calibration issue.
I have no idea what colour profiles I should be selecting in preferences. I have attached a screenshot of my colour settings.
NVIDIA System Information 01-05-2017 09-51-49.txt

Affinity Photo version 1.5.2
1. Auto select existing parameter to speed up data entry
When the user clicks on the value box to enter a parameter value, the cursor is place at the position of the mouse click. It usually requires the user to select the entire contents and type over or backspace to clear the existing value. Data entry would be faster if AP auto select the entire value string when the user first click on the value box and the user just needs to enter a value over it.
2. Tone Mapping Persona - Collapsible Preset Area
The tone mapping preset area is displayed permanently which occupied precious screen real estate especially if you are working a small monitor (eg. laptop). The preset is useful to get a starting point to work on, thereafter, most of the adjustments are carried out on the "studio" panel on the right. A collapsible preset area would give the user a bigger space to work on the image.
3. Default UI color
Dark gray on even darker gray is hard to distinguish. This is especially true for the dynamic toolbar that shows the various mode for each tool the user is working on. For example, in the Pen tool, it is hard to distinguish at a glance which mode (pen mode, smart mode, polygon mode, ...) the pen is currently in.
4. Crop tool. Provide a modifier key to change the cursor from selection to move (vice versa)
When the user first select the crop tool, the cursor is default to selection point even though the crop frame is displayed. The user can click on the edge handles to reside the crop frame or directly draw the crop frame using the selection point. If the user first change the the crop ratio, the selection point remains even though the crop frame is already displayed. There is no way to move the existing crop frame other than to draw a new one. It would be better to have a modifier key to toggle between selection cursor or move cursor.
5. HSL dialog. Ability to display all the colours instead of using a drop down
In the HSL, it would be nice to display the colour swatch for the user to select instead of using a slower drop down menu. This way, the user can quickly and intuitively select the colours to adjust.
6. Photo / Developer Personas. Adjusting saturation & vibrance.
In the Photo Persona, colour saturation is adjusted on the HSL adjustment whereas vibrance has a separate adjustment. In the Developer Persona, saturation and vibrance are grouped together. Would it be possible to standardise these adjustment in the two personas?
7. Blend mode
I am a novice in using the blend mode and I find it hard to visualise the result. I'm wondering if an assistant and/or some presets would be useful to help users in utilising this feature.

Hi,
I feel there's one little big detail missing from Affinity Photo: it would be great to have a progress indicator when opening a documents.
Sometimes it happens to load very large documents and it's just saying "Loading 1 document" without any progress indicator. It looks like to program is stuck and doing nothing: it would be nice to have a percetage indicator or a progress bar.
Thanks a lot !
F.

Hello, I have been waiting with excitement for the Affinity BETA to come out on windows. After opening Affinity, i was not convinced. I really got this "not bad" feeling.. This is because of 1 main issue; i don't like the user interface. Functionally speaking, its great. It beats photoshop in my opinion. But its not even close to what i had hoped for.. I am a big fan of "minimalism" and "flat" design, not just for its looks, but for the overall experience. I came accross a photoshop redisign made by Aurélien Salomon on Behance: https://www.behance.net/gallery/19600227/Photoshop-redesign This is how a modern and new photo editor app/program, in my opinion, should look like. Design is contantly evolving, so the tools that are used to create design should be designed with this in mind. My suggestion: create an user interface that works with templates. Give the user control of how Affinity looks like. What would be better then an editor that by itself gives inspiration to create more beautifull & smart designs?

I decided to create visual journal to keep things organized. Due to work, i won't be able to post regularly. But i will try to keep things organized here.
You can check out my Dribbble account to see my work. I haven't started posting work on Dribbble using AD yet as i got the software for 2 days only. But i would soon.
You can also checkout out my DeviantArt account where i upload the source file of the design if you are interested in downloading the files and examining.

First, I have to say I really like this program. I have Photoshop and Pixelmator but try to use AP as much as possible. And it's that potential which makes my comment more frustrating.
I don't know what it is, but there is something about AP which doesn't make sense. I have used graphics programs for 30 years so I generally know what I'm doing, but I constantly find myself "trapped" by AP. Things happen for no apparent reason.
For example, today I extended the canvas size and saw the extra transparent area appear, but there was nothing I could do with it. None of the tools worked. Then I tried to copy pixels from the background later. I couldn't. Why not? In the end I had to do a screen grab to the clipboard, paste to a new layer, then merge the layers! Huh?
It could very well be my ignorance, but I thought what I tried to do made sense. There's something unintuitive about this program some times. Just sayin'... Maybe concentrate on making the UI more intuitive next upgrade?

The black and nearly black backgrounds of Affinity Photo windows, toolbars and palettes entirely distract me and I'm sure Serif knows that reading white type reversed out of black background is a strain. How do I change the UI preferences to display white or light backgrounds?

I have recently installed the trial version for Affinity and was trying to understand the basics of the program. When I launch the program and open any photograph, histogram is not shown on the right side. I am also unable to see the Filters menu on the top. Even simple tools like sharpening are not visible to me. Can anyone guide me in this interface with these three things -
How do I see the histogram on the right side?
Where is the filters menu?
How do I start the sharpening tool?
I am also attaching a screenshot of the freshly installed program on Windows 7 professional.